Breathing Back in Gaspesie

Time just flew out of my head. For months, projects after projects have kept me on the edge, taking care of decisions, marking the path ahead.

Then all disappeared in a flash. Two tendons ruptured and a surgery later, I was stopped, left floating in my own head. Pain and anger, caught inside, unable and afraid. Surgery robs, but time gives back. You have to let it heal. It works. It looks so fast when you've done it, when you look behind, but it takes so long when you're in it. Every day grinds by painfully, until days become weeks and you fill like you've reached the top of the hill.

The process took its toll. I was watching summer pass me by and felt the pang. I missed events, opportunities, had to cancel trips, it wasn't easy and it all felt like a sum of little deaths. But that's not the message. The message is that it ends and that you have to plan for it. For me, salvation came from a trip to Gaspesie, a trip planned in the wake of the surgery.

Time slowed down, but outside of the daily mundane. Replaced by the extraordinary mundane. Simple stuff, all of it, but filled with a different peace. The big cities, they too take their toll, and it's hard to notice when you're in the midst of it. You need to be out to see it for what it is, like tasting a cigarette after having stopped for a month. A compromise.